Half a Rupee: Stories by Gulzar

Remember when we were kids, how we would go to watch sheep ram their horns into each other—you too must have bunked school to see them fight …’
    I found him a very down-to-earth person. There was a deeply felt honesty in his way of speaking. I must have asked him something that made him say, ‘Yes, of course! A soldier too is scared—at first. But after he fires his gun a few times, empties a few bullets, fear takes fight. When bullets are fired, there’s a kind of smell that permeates the air—that of burnt gunpowder. And at the front, you get intoxicated with it, sort of addicted to it. When the guns fall silent and the trance is about to be broken you begin to fire again. Not necessarily at the enemy. Just so that you do not sober up.’
    He paused and then added, ‘When you face your fear, you become familiar with it and familiarity makes it lose its meaning, loosen its grip—fear ceases to be fear.’
    To me it seemed as if he was asking people at the front to get intimate with death—it will come when it comes.
    He said, ‘Right in the beginning, at the outset of your training when you are prostrate on the ground, grazing your knees and your elbows, the thought does come time and again to quit, to give it all up. But when your bargedar (brigadier) singles you out and reprimands you on your mistake, when he screams at you, demanding to know which part of the country you are from, then believe me, sahib, you are unable to take the name of your village or state—it is just so embarrassing.’
    Perhaps this is what translates into honour for a soldier—the honour of the soil that you come from, the honour that a soldier needs to defend at all costs.
    Captain Shaheen kept up his narration. ‘Suchitgarh is a small little hamlet—of a few houses. Some had already been abandoned because they were very close to the border and some when we marched into the village. It was necessary for us to inspect each and every house: when you win a territory without any resistance, you are wise to suspect an enemy manoeuvre. It could be one of their traps.’
    He was of the opinion that there is a great difference in the temperament of the soldiers on the two sides. ‘They are both Punjabis but the soldiers on this side—they are a little more aggressive. And those on the other side—they are of a more pacific nature, more calm. Farmers on the other side till their lands within inches of the border. But on this side, they let at least two–three hundred yards of barren land distance their houses and farms from theborder. In such places, troops of five to seven soldiers patrol the borders on either side. And often they are in such close proximity to each other that they can light each other’s cigarettes.
    ‘The soldiers on this side are commonly Punjabis but on the other side you often find non-Punjabis. Many a times, the soldiers on this side shout across the border, “So, bhai! Where from?” If that soldier is from down south he shouts back in English but normally what you hear is Hindi laced with Urdu.
    ‘After seizing Suchitgarh, I took a troop of four or five soldiers and started checking the houses in the village. As my men pushed open the door of a house, they found a small boy cowering in one corner of the house, scared out of his wits. My men called out to me, “Sirji.”
    ‘The moment I reached there the boy leapt towards me and hugged me. He just wouldn’t let go. My men pulled him away, somehow. I was troubled; what was I to do with him? I could hardly get a word out of the boy—he was too scared to even tell me the name of his parents. He just stood there, shaking in fear. I told him to scamper, to run away. But he just couldn’t. So I put him in my jeep and brought him back to my post. I gave him something to eat and asked him to lie down in a corner. I instructed my men not to let a word of this out—technically, he was our prisoner of war. I was duty-bound to report this matter to my